Heart of Us

by Emma Browne

  ‘Well isn’t that funny: I felt led to make a fancy dessert.’ Karen sighed. ‘There you go; God knew all along, didn’t he?’ Karen started clearing the table.

  ‘I think that’s what’s called confirmation bias,’ Michael muttered.

  ‘What’s that, Michael dear?’ Karen asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ Michael sighed, and opted not to rock the boat. ‘It was nothing.’

  Later that afternoon, John pulled me aside to tell me he had a plan for getting Dad into a free rehab. It felt like a stone fell off my shoulders and I could breathe again. It was a Christian rehab, and John knew of other people that had gone through their intense but good program. There was a waiting list, but until there was an opening for Dad, John would meet with him every week, and Dad had agreed to go to AA with John again. This time I knew rehab wasn’t going to be a magic cure; there would continue to be ups and downs in his journey. But I hoped Dad would get better and be able to straighten out his life some.

  And I would trust that, whatever happened, God’s love was deep enough, thick enough, wide enough, to cover us all.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you for reading Miranda and Jack’s story. I still struggle to believe there are people that want to read my weird stories, but I’m thankful for every one of you. I hope Cross My Heart has inspired you to ask new questions and to not settle until you find answers that align with the character of God as revealed in Jesus.

  It is my aim whenever I write not to preach – I want to leave room for the questions to grow, rather than to give answers – but I recognise that in this book I come awfully close. This is because I do have strong beliefs about God being good and loving. The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy said: ‘It is terrible when people do not know God, but it is worse when people identify as God what is not God.’ So, in this story, there are a few conclusions. Sorry about that.

  And thank you to all who contributed to making this story happen:

  Thank you to Ernest for pushing me to think outside of the box and for challenging me not to settle. Thank you for being so patient with me, and for walking alongside me through the highs and lows of life. I love you.

  Thank you to my children. You guys inspire me, widen my horizons and push me out of my comfort zone, and I’m so utterly blessed to be your mum.

  David: thank you for challenging me and championing me to know Jesus more. And thank you for reading my manuscripts and being real with me.

  Samuel: thank you for your honesty and for your kindness.

  Mary: thank you for being an inspiration to so many and for giving of yourself to champion young people to know Jesus more. Thank you for all the hours of editing and for continuously finding ways of encouraging me to write better. And thank you for all the input and for letting me ask a million questions.

  Becky: thank you for catching the annoying repetitions, for the tweaks (all of them, but particularly the New Year’s awkwardness), and for pushing me to do better. And most of all – thank you for your friendship.

  You guys are all amazing and I wish you all lived closer.

  Thank you also to Youth With A Mission. I’m so thankful for the thirteen years I got to work with you all.

  Thank you to Jesus for showing me what love is.

  If you enjoyed Miranda and Jack’s story, I would appreciate it if you would leave a review on Amazon or GoodReads – or recommend ‘Heart of Us’ to all your friends!

  Much love,

  Emma Browne

  Other Books by Emma Browne

  Cross My Heart

  Julia comes home to her flat in Edinburgh, Scotland, to find her brother's annoying friend Nick is living in her flat. Nick won't go away, and soon their frenemy relationship turns into friendship, and attraction turns into... love.

  But Julia's guilty conscience and Nick's broken background put up hurdles for their relationship, and they soon find themselves questioning the beliefs they've held as true for as long as they can remember.

  A contemporary romance with Christian themes.

  If you haven’t yet read Cross My Heart, check out the next page to read chapter one!

  Cross My Heart can be bought here!

  Book 3 of the Hearts series (title still to come!) will be Sophia and Michael’s story, and it is currently being written. For news about when to expect it, sign up to Emma’s newsletter.

  Or follow on Instagram: @romancebyemmab

  CROSS MY HEART

  Chapter 1

  Julia

  When I came home to my cosy flat in Edinburgh after spending a year in Kenya, the last person I expected to see sitting on my living room couch was Nick.

  But there he was.

  He wore a grey T-shirt with a tight pair of jeans, looking as though he didn’t have a care in the world. His long dark hair was tied up in a man bun, and there was a small pencil behind his ear. His short, scruffy beard just added to his relaxed appearance.

  Startled, I shook my head and decided it couldn’t be him. Maybe I was just imagining Nick sitting in my living room. Maybe I was so tired, I was seeing things.

  One could only hope.

  Then he looked up from his laptop, his eyes twinkled when he saw me. ‘Hi.’

  Nope. I wasn’t making it up. Somehow Nick was sitting in my living room.

  I shrieked. Or, maybe it was more like a yelp.

  Nick scrunched his eyebrows and tilted his head to one side, biting his lip as if to hide a smile.

  Nick was not my favourite person. I would say I never had liked him, but that wouldn’t be strictly true, as I did go through a phase of fancying myself quite in love with him. Still, that passed, and soon we’d developed a rather more hostile relationship. And though I was surprised and decidedly unhappy to see him on my couch, he was one of my brother’s best friends, so not exactly a threat.

  To anything but my sanity.

  I took a deep breath as warring emotions washed through me. Surprise was swallowed by attraction, which was (quickly) pushed aside by irritation. Why was he there? Why did he seem so comfortable on my couch? Why was he there? How did he get access to my flat? Why was he there?

  Deciding I was too tired to deal with the questions now, I pushed the emotions aside, set down my backpack, and got my frozen pizza out of the carrier bag so I could go put it in the oven.

  ‘Huh, you look like you’ve seen better days.’ His American accent had softened somewhat over the almost ten years he’d spent in Scotland, but it was still distinctly there.

  I guessed my tired, frazzled look wasn’t a hit.

  ‘Yes. In fact, I consider most days where I don’t come home after travelling for thirty-six hours to find you on my couch ‘better days.’’ I sneered. Whilst I was a mess – I had a coffee stain on my shirt, my curly, red hair had given up on the braid a long time ago, and I’m pretty sure my mascara was smeared around my eyes – Nick was…not.

  Of course he wasn’t. Nick was never a mess.

  No matter how hard he worked on the football pitch, or how dirty he was from being on his job site where he worked as site manager or something on construction projects, he was never a mess. Dirt and sweat just added to his physical appeal. And, let’s be real: despite being over my crush for a long time, I was still a little (a lot) attracted to his looks.

  ‘Wow, I missed you too.’ Nick grinned and rubbed his hand over his chest as though his heart hurt.

  ‘Uh-huh, sure.’ I rolled my eyes at him. I was hungry and sweaty, my hair was a mess, and I was tired enough to fall asleep standing up. All I’d been able to think of for the past hour was how I would put the pizza in the oven, have a quick shower, eat dinner, and go to bed. I might even skip the shower. I didn’t have the patience to play nice with the guy who had done everything possible to be a thorn in my side for the last nine years.

  I stepped over his laptop cord and walked toward the kitchen to put the pizza in the oven. I stopped in the door and took in the mess. The cupboards and counters had been ripped
out and were partway through being replaced. It was a construction site. It looked like there were new tiles on the wall, and the sink was definitely new.

  ‘About the kitchen,’ Nick said, coming up behind me as I took in the destruction formerly known as my kitchen.

  ‘Wow…’ I cleared my throat and looked around with wide eyes as I grasped for words. ‘Where are my hard hat and steel-toe boots?’

  ‘It’s not that bad.’ Nick looked at me cautiously. ‘Really, it’s just a few hours off being finished.’

  ‘Uh-huh, or a few days. You know, either or,’ I said wryly. ‘Does the oven even work?’ I unwrapped the pizza and went about trying to find a baking sheet to put it into the oven on. ‘Gosh, I should have gotten takeout…’ I muttered under my breath.

  ‘Yeah, it works.’ Nick put the oven on and took the pizza out of my hands. ‘Hey, why don’t you go sit down or have a shower or something? I’ll sort your dinner out.’

  I looked at him sceptically, but I decided I was not about to battle through a construction site in order to eat. ‘I’m not sharing the pizza.’

  ‘Mmm-hmm, Jewel, off you go.’ He pointed to the bathroom with his chin. ‘You’ll feel better after a shower.’

  Julia. My name is Julia.

  Not Jewel.

  Nobody else called me Jewel, and it drove me crazy that Nick would. I’d thought ignoring it would make him stop, but after nine years, it was still what he called me. Probably because he knew it drove me up the wall. I rolled my eyes but didn’t have the energy to set him straight. ‘I’m going to need coffee with it, black, no sugar. I bought some.’ I handed it to him. ‘Dare I ask what the state of the bathroom is?’

  ‘Sure, thing. Yeah, no worries about the bathroom. I even cleaned it the other day.’

  ***

  As it turned out, the bathroom was clean and tidy. I found an old bottle of bubble bath in a box labelled ‘Bathroom’ in my bedroom and had a nice soak for about twenty minutes until Nick knocked on the door to say the pizza would be ready in ten minutes. I quickly washed my hair, using some of Nick’s shampoo, which smelled a bit too much like him to be comfortable. I pulled on a pair of leggings and a loose long-sleeved shirt and wrapped my hair in a towel.

  ‘Your pizza’s just here on the table when you’re ready, Jewel.’ Nick pointed to the coffee table in the living room. ‘Do you want a beer or anything?’

  ‘I think a beer would put me to sleep. I’ll just have a glass of water with my coffee, please. Where have all the glasses gone?’ Just thinking about the mess in the kitchen made me want to give up and start crying. Nothing was where it belonged.

  I must have looked a bit frazzled since Nick said, ‘Calm down, Jewel.’ He stroked a hand down my arm. His touch made me feel… things. Unable to deal with more emotions, particularly emotions I was sure weren’t meant to be there, I moved away from his hand.

  ‘The kitchen should be a quick enough job to finish.’ Nick found me a glass and handed it to me with a shrug. ‘Your system wasn’t working for me, so I decided to rearrange things, and while I was at it, I figured I might as well upgrade the kitchen. So right now, things like plates, glasses, and stuff are in the bookshelf in the living room. I packed the rest away in those boxes until I’m done.’ He pointed to the boxes lining the living room wall.

  My earlier resolution not to deal with things tonight flew out the window as my warring emotions burst through. ‘Right. Well, two things. One, I’m not paying for all this.’ I held up a finger. ‘And two, could you not have finished it before I got home? How long have you been living here? Why are you living here? And why wait until you were just about to move out to renovate the kitchen?’ I shook my head and went to fill my glass with water. I sat down on the couch. I felt a headache coming on.

  ‘Yeah, of course, I’m not expecting you to pay. Why would I?’ Nick frowned and shook his head as though I was being stupid.

  I took a bite of pizza to stop my tummy from grumbling. It was just a simple ham and pineapple pizza, but it tasted so good after having airplane food and snacking on cashews for too long. ‘I assume you cleared this with my parents, in any case.’ My parents did technically own the flat and had been taking care of it when I was away.

  Or so they’d said.

  Turns out their taking care of the flat meant letting Nick move in and renovate it.

  ‘And to be fair, we weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.’ He went on as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘I’m sure that’s what your mum said.’

  ‘Yeah. Mum got it wrong.’ My mum never had been great with details.

  I looked around at the mess. There were boxes with food and kitchenware all over the lounge, and the kitchen had one cupboard in place and sawdust on the floor. ‘In any case, there is no way you would have had that sorted by tomorrow.’ I waved one hand at the mess and used my other hand to stuff my mouth with pizza. ‘Just look at it!’

  ‘It’ll look great when it’s done, though. You’ll see.’ He smiled confidently.

  ‘Uh-huh…’ I groaned around the pizza and reached for another slice. Nick reached for one too, and I slapped his hands away. ‘Not sharing.’

  ‘Oh, come on, seriously?’ He raised his eyebrows and sat back with his beer. ‘Scrooge.’

  ‘Get your own.’ I sighed. ‘When are you moving out?’

  He looked at me with a funny expression. ‘We’ll see, I guess.’

  I returned his funny look with one of my own. ‘Right, because I want my flat back. So, no rush, but as soon as possible would be good.’ I longed to have the flat to myself and not have to deal with the pesky butterflies his cheeky grin conjured up in my stomach.

  He took the last sip of his beer and raised his eyebrow. ‘Do you want me to finish the kitchen first, though?’

  ‘Ha-ha, very funny.’

  He smiled as he unfolded himself from the armchair and stretched his tall, lean body. I looked away, refusing to be drawn in by his muscles, and tried to focus on the pizza.

  Nick reached for his empty beer bottle and went into the kitchen. He put some old Jack Johnson music on and got to work. I finished eating and tried to ignore him altogether— something I found was easier said than done. After not being around him for a year, one might have thought some of my annoyance with him might have shifted. But, no. Somehow, I hadn’t been back for two hours, and the insufferable guy was already back up my nose.

  Keep reading by buying Cross My Heart here!